Vice President Joe Biden was right last year when he predicted that Barack Obama would be tested early on by an international crisis, William Kristol writes. The Iranian regime has tested the new president, Kristol says, by “preemptively scorning his overtures, mocking his weakness, and assuring the world its nuclear program is nonnegotiable.”

Russia too has seized its opportunity to “test the mettle” of Obama. Last week, Kyrgyzstan, under pressure from Russia, told the U.S. it would no longer be allowed to use an air base that coalition forces had relied on for the Afghanistan operation.

Then there is North Korea. Having scrapped all its agreements with South Korea, Kristol writes, it is “preparing to test a new ballistic missile, the Taepodong-2, which is intended to eventually have a long enough range to hit U.S. territory.”

Kristol notes,

Now these aren’t big tests. They’re more like pop-quizzes, preparatory to the real exams. And it’s understandable that the Obama administration, whose foreign policy apparatus is not yet fully staffed and, indeed, seems barely organized, hasn’t responded much to them one way or the other.But these quizzes are a taste of what’s to come. And they suggest Obama had better focus on the commander in chief part of his job, not just on his domestic concerns.

But domestic concerns, as Kristol points out, appear to be heading up Obama’s agenda. In an interview on CNN last week, the president told Anderson Cooper, “Look, the only measure of my success as president, when people look back five years from now or nine years from now, is going to be, did I get this economy fixed?”

This, however, wasn’t even the case for Franklin D. Roosevelt, who became president during the Great Depression. Kristol continues,

And every president since World War II—with the possible exception of Bill Clinton in that brief post-Cold War/pre-September 11 holiday from history—has been judged more centrally and fundamentally for his foreign policy performance than for his economic efforts. …Is our new commander in chief fully aware how dangerous the world can get, and how fast, when America is weak or distracted? He might reflect on the consequences of our neglect of our foreign policy in 1933-39, when we were obsessed with our economic problems—or even in 1993-2000.

Negotiating With Ourselves

While the U.S. is showing its hand in declaring its intention to engage diplomatically with Iran, Tehran is holding out for a better deal, buying time for its ongoing nuclear work and viewing Washington’s initiatives with disdain.

At a security conference in Germany yesterday, Vice President Biden reiterated President Obama’s pledge to hold official talks with Iran. But as a U.S.-based Iranian dissident told Newsmax, Iran is steering clear of direct talks for now as the new U.S. administration negotiates with itself in public. “Why should they agree to anything when they can sit back and watch the U.S. negotiate a better deal for them on television?” he asked. Newsmax writes (emphasis ours throughout),

While such an approach [talks with Iran being used as a tactic] might make sense in Washington, leaders in Iran have so far rejected any efforts to get them to slow down their nuclear program, or to agree to reduce their support for terrorist groups such as Hamas.Instead, every fresh statement from Washington about the Obama administration’s willingness to talk seems to be taken as a sign of weakness in Tehran, where Iran’s leaders just keep on upping the ante. …The Iranian regime could go even further in its demands on the U.S. in the coming weeks, according to irna, the official news agency.

Those demands would revolve around the new U.S. administration’s pledge to end the use of “torture” against suspected terrorists, which Biden reiterated in Munich. irna commented that Biden’s remarks on torture “followed recent statements by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak, who urged the indictment of former U.S. president George W. Bush and his Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for their role in the torture and abuse of prisoners in the notorious Guantanamo prison camp.”

Read our column “Why Obama Worries Israel” for more on the impact of the Obama administration’s new approach to Iran.

Dialogue With Iran: Every President Tries and Fails

The new White House’s efforts to engage Iran diplomatically actually have a lengthy and ignoble pedigree, Michael Rubin writes in this week’s Weekly Standard. “[M]any of Obama’s supposedly bold initiatives have been tried before, often with disastrous results,” Rubin says. He details events surrounding the devastating 1979 American hostage situation in Iran, and President Carter’s repeated and failed attempts to resolve the crisis through diplomacy.

Three decades ago, desperate to engage, Carter grasped at any straw, believing, according to his secretary of state, that even a tenuous partner beat no partner at all. Each partner—first foreign minister Abolhassan Bani-Sadr and then his successor Sadeq Qotbzadeh—added demands to bolster his own revolutionary credentials, pushing diplomacy backward rather than forward.

Rubin then shows how President Reagan’s infamous Iran-Contra affair also stemmed from an effort to engage Iran. His successor, George H.W. Bush, also spoke of a new era of “hope” with respect to relations with Iran. The Ayatollah Khomeini died shortly after he took office, and Hashemi Rafsanjani was seen as a far more preferable potential partner with whom to work. But alas, Rubin writes, “as Rafsanjani spoke publicly of pragmatism, he privately ordered both the revival of Iran’s covert nuclear program and the murder of dissidents in Europe.” The article continues, speaking about President Clinton’s second term:

[Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright] apologized for past U.S. policies. The State Department encouraged U.S. businessmen to visit Iran, until Iranian vigilantes attacked a busload of American visitors in 1998. Not discouraged, and lest U.S. rhetoric offend, Albright even ordered U.S. officials to cease referring to Iran as a rogue regime, and instead as a “state of concern.” Rather than spark rapprochement, however, it was during this time that, according to the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, Tehran sought to develop a nuclear warhead.

The article concludes,

While the press paints George W. Bush as hostile to diplomacy and applauds the return of Bill Clinton’s diplomatic team under his wife’s leadership, it is ironic that the outgoing administration engaged Iran more than any U.S. presidency since Carter—directing senior diplomats to hold more than two dozen meetings with their Iranian counterparts. Yet, after 30 years, Iran remains as intractable a problem as ever. Every new U.S. president has sought a new beginning with Iran, but whenever a president assumes the fault for our poor relationship lies with his predecessor more than with authorities in Tehran, the United States gets burned.

As Solomon wrote, “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”

Iran’s War Against the PLO

Last week, Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal called for new leadership to replace the PLO in Ramallah. He said the PLO, led by Mahmoud Abbas, was responsible for “deepening divisions among Palestinians.” According to the Jerusalem Post,

The PA is also worried because the idea of replacing the PLO is being backed by prominent Arab political analysts, newspaper editors and even veteran Fatah leader Farouk Kaddoumi. …Mashaal’s statement has been interpreted by PA and Fatah officials in the West Bank as “the most serious challenge to the PLO since its founding.”

A Fatah official closely associated with Mahmoud Abbas accused Iran and Syria of meddling in the affairs of the PLO. He said,

They are inciting some sick people like Khaled Mashaal to reject national reconciliation and to go ahead with their plans to form an alternative leadership. But these attempts are doomed to failure.

Another PA official said, “We see this as a declaration of war on the legitimate representatives of the Palestinians.”

For more about the inevitable demise of Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah, read what we wrote here.

U.S. Forces Face Supply-Line Challenges

Making matters worse for the U.S.—and possibly increasing the pressure on Washington to diplomatically engage Iran—are the challenges the U.S. faces in getting military supplies to the Afghan theater through either Pakistan or a northern route. Newsmax reports,

Pakistan, which President George W. Bush elevated to the rank of “major non-nato ally,” is now deemed too dangerous for the hundreds of U.S. and nato supply trucks that keep allied forces fighting against the Taliban in Afghanistan.In the latest attack against the nato lifeline, 11 trucks and 13 containers were demolished outside Peshawar, near the northern end of the 600-mile route from the port of Karachi to the Khyber Pass. This followed the attack and collapse of a key bridge near the Khyber Pass, which backed up about 1,000 trucks all the way to Karachi. Normally, about 600 supply trucks a day cross the border into Afghanistan. …nato and U.S. forces in Afghanistan require 70,000 containers of supplies a year, or about 75 percent of their total needs in fuel, food, equipment, and construction materials. On any given day, 3 million gallons of fuel are on Pakistani roads destined for allied forces in Afghanistan. In some cases, the Taliban extracted payments of $1,000 a vehicle at the point of a gun. Helicopter engines valued at $13 million also were hijacked. Taliban fighters gave Pakistani drivers certificates guaranteeing their trucks were requisitioned, not stolen.The southern route through Pakistan was kept open while negotiations proceeded with Russia and the former Soviet Muslim republics—known as the “Stans”—for an alternate northern route. Supplies would be unloaded onto trains in German ports and taken by rail through Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and then by truck into Afghanistan, a distance five times longer than the 1,000-kilometer journey from Karachi to Kabul. Hardly an incentive for nato and U.S. staying power against the Taliban in Afghanistan.It doesn’t require an overwhelming effort of geopolitical imagination to see the potential for Russian troublemaking along the northern supply route. For the time being, the Medvedev-Putin tandem has made clear that the U.S.- nato operation against the Taliban in Afghanistan is also in Russia’s interest.The men in the Kremlin are anxious to prevent Islamist extremism spreading from Afghanistan into the Stans. They also like the idea of America’s military machine pinned down in Iraq and Afghanistan. After all, the Soviets spent 10 years fighting the mujahedin guerrillas—and were forced into a humiliating withdrawal six months before the fall of the Berlin Wall.They wouldn’t mind seeing superpower America suffer the same fate. When they want to express displeasure, they can turn nato’s northern route into a Pakistan-like nightmare; all they have to do is invoke a railroad strike or a major railroad accident to cause difficult breathing on nato’s Afghan supply lung.The five- to 10-year commitment in Afghanistan, as seen by some members of the Obama administration, loses much of its allure as the United States switches supply lines from the southern route through Pakistan to the northern route through Russia. …Moscow’s primacy in its “near abroad” is back in business. After taking $150 million a year from the United States for base rights at Manas, Kyrgyzstan changed its mind and asked the United States to leave. Russian pressure came in the form of $2 billion in credits and $150 million in aid. But the United States said no deal, we’re staying. About 1,000 Americans are based there, and 15,000 U.S. personnel are rotated in and out of Afghanistan via Manas every month. …Some nato allies have pointed out that a shorter and more efficient route would be through Turkey and Iran into Afghanistan. Besides diplomatic engagement, the Obama administration has yet to decide on a new Iranian policy.

The New New Deal

As the government debates on the bailout this week, Mark Steyn helps shed some light on the sheer scale of the package.

Barry Ritholz, author of the forthcoming book Bailout Nation, calculated … that the tab for the bailout by November 24 was already $4.6165 trillion. … The media coo over Obama’s “new New Deal,” but, as Mr. Ritholz pointed out, if you adjust for inflation, the combined costs of the old New Deal plus the Louisiana Purchase, the Marshall Plan, the Korean, Vietnam, and Iraq wars, and every NASA project in history—oh, and the S&L crisis—add up to a mere $3.92 trillion. Even as he was totting up his numbers, the Bloomberg news service estimated that, factoring in Citibank and a couple of other Johnny-come-latelys, the bailout bill was in fact up to $7.76 trillion—which is the combined cost of all that other stuff (Louisiana Purchase, etc.) plus the $3.6 trillion of the Second World War. … Obama isn’t the new New Deal. He’s the new everything. It seems safe to say that, adjusted for the usual government underestimates, by, oh, mid-2010 the bailout will have cost more than all of American history combined.

The Awakening Russian Bear

“While we were preoccupied elsewhere,” an intelligence analyst at the National Defense University wrote in the Washington Times, “a certain pugnacious bear awoke and we don’t seem to be doing a particularly good—or proactive—job of dealing with him.” Analyst Peter Humphrey cited several of Russia’s recent power overtures—including its plans for arctic expansionism, increasing opposition of U.S. military plans, energy bullying, bullying of nato candidates, strengthening ties with America’s enemies, careless arms sales and domestic subjection (assassinations of journalists, activists, lawyers, etc.).

On Friday, the Washington Post reported that Russia plans to finance a nuclear power plant in Belarus, thus increasing that country’s reliance on Russia as well.

“We may not be perceiving this as one grand strategy, but rest assured, the folks who are engaged in these endeavors most certainly do,” Humphrey wrote. “Somewhere in the Kremlin is a big fat book listing myriad policy options to resuscitate the empire without risking Western military wrath. The tests were unchallenged operations in Chechnya, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, all of which proceeded without our overt or covert intervention. So more nibbling at the margins is pretty much assured.”

Mr. Humphrey warned of Russia’s further alignment with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization—an alliance with the Central Asian republics, designed “ostensibly to fight terrorism but certain to diminish U.S. influence” in the region.

As editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote last October, “Russia is challenging America. The Soviet empire is making a comeback!”

Lieberman Surging in Israeli Polls

The Washington Timesreports one of the most remarkable trends in the late-term Israeli election campaign which culminates Tuesday. Front-runners Tzipi Livni and Benjamin Netanyahu are close in the polls, Netanyahu having the edge, but another figure has made serious gains in recent weeks. Avidgor Lieberman and his party will make significant gains when Israelis cast their votes, according to recent surveys, jumping past Ehud Barak’s party to the third-place spot and positioning itself to be a “kingmaker” of the next Israeli government, says the Times. Lieberman’s appeal? A clarion nationalist call. Lieberman, whom the Times describes as “ultranationalist,” has one central theme to his campaign. Under the slogan “no loyalty, no citizenship,” Lieberman has made Israeli Arabs the crux of the issue, focusing on their role in Israel’s terrorized and national insecurity issues. Look for these divisions between Jews and Israelis to sharpen and deepen with this election, with Netanyahu likely emerging as Israel’s new prime minister and Lieberman’s party weighing in heavily on standing up against Arabs.

The Ghosts of Germany’s African “Forbidden Zone”

It is one of the Bible’s most harrowing prophecies: that a German-led Europe will rape Africa of its riches in order to stoke the furnaces of a resurrected globalist empire. You can read about it in “The Battleground,” a feature in our March 2006 Trumpet issue.

Knowing this sickening scenario is about to come to life, we read with interest an article in yesterday’s Daily Mail called, “The first Holocaust: Horrifying secrets of Germany’s earliest genocide inside Africa’s ‘Forbidden Zone.’” It describes a remarkable region in southwest Namibia, “a place whose savage emptiness conceals the terrible secrets of a Nazi past, adorned with the tainted beauty of blood diamonds.” Before it was defeated by the British Empire’s South African forces in World War i, the German colonial army ruled the area, known as Sperrgebiet, the Forbidden Zone.

This past week, most of this 20,000-square-kilometer area became a national park. The exception is Oranjemund, “probably the most restricted city in the free world”—a city where only diamond merchants are allowed, at risk of imprisonment or death. Why? Because in Oranjemund, each year, a staggering 1.3 million carats of diamonds are mined. Anything that goes in and out of the city is scrupulously checked for smuggled diamonds—to the point that those exiting have their bodies x-rayed and all their orifices explored.

Perhaps the grim-faced armed guards have learned a few tricks from their German forebears, because it’s here in the diamond cities of the desert where the history of Namibia collides very brutally with the history of German imperialism and the sinister antecedents of the Nazis.In a way, Namibia exists because of German interest in diamonds. In the early 1900s, geologists began exploring the area’s lonely wastes for mineral wealth, including diamonds.

When a treasure chest of diamond wealth was discovered, the German rulers of Namibia dispatched their elite colonial forces to secure it.

The problem was that these forces were led by men who had two ways of dealing with difficulties: violence or, failing that, extreme violence. …In the mid-1900s the Herero people of northern Namibia rebelled, massacring dozens of German settlers.The Germans saw this revolt as a serious threat to the potential of their diamond-rich colony, so they despatched a ruthless Prussian imperialist, Lothar von Trotha, to deal with the uprising.The Kaiser’s explicit instructions to his upper-class viceroy were to ‘emulate the Huns’ in savagery.Von Trotha didn’t need encouraging. His intentions were quite plain. ‘I know enough tribes in Africa,’ he boasted. ‘They are all alike insofar as they only yield to violence. My policy was, and is, to exercise this violence with blatant terrorism and cruelty.’He was as good as his word. After several battles, where the Herero were slain in their multitudes, von Trotha decided to finish the job once and for all by destroying the entire Herero people. In 1907 he issued his notorious extermination order, or ernichtungsbefehl. … The Herero were driven west, into the Kalahari desert, to expire.Guards were stationed at waterholes so the people couldn’t drink; many wells were deliberately poisoned.In the searing heat of the desert, denied water and food, the Herero didn’t last long. Some women and children tried to return, but they were immediately shot.Accounts of the holocaust are unbearably harrowing. Witnesses reported hundreds of people just lying in the desert, dying of thirst.Children went mad among the corpses of their parents; the buzzing of the flies was deafening. Paralyzed people were eaten alive by leopards and jackals.The end was swift; the “thirstland” of the Kalahari had taken its toll. The official German Imperial report into this colonial “war” concluded with sickening eloquence: ‘The death rattle of the dying and the furious screams of madness . . . faded away in the sublime silence of infinitude.’Reliable historians estimate that 60,000 died in this appalling crime, constituting 70 to 80 percent of the entire Herero people. The genocide affects Namibia’s demography and politics to this day.

What brings this history even more to life—particularly considering the prophecy of Germany’s future in Africa—is Berlin’s renewed interest in Namibia today. Germany is one of the nation’s biggest aid donors; German tourists are its most frequent Western visitors; German is widely spoken in Namibian cities. And, the Mail notes, “Germans are also expected to be the main tourists at the newly opened Sperrgebiet National Park.”

Rogue Nuclear Mastermind Released

In late 2003, evidence surfaced that Pakistan had supplied both Iran and Libya with nuclear weapons hardware and technology. Almost immediately, America began putting the thumbs on Pakistan to find and punish those responsible for assisting the Iranian nuclear program. Within a couple of months, the culprit had been located and exposed.

On Feb. 4, 2004, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, dubbed the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, appeared on a state-run television network to claim sole responsibility for operating an international black market in nuclear material, including selling nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya. Facing pressure from the United States, Pakistan has had Khan, although never officially arrested and prosecuted, under house arrest for the past five years.

Until last week.

On Friday, the top judge in the Islamabad High Court released Khan, and the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program and the man at the center of one of history’s worst nuclear scandals walked from his home a free man. “The so-called A.Q. Khan affair is a closed chapter,” said a Pakistan government spokesman.

The Khan affair might be closed for Pakistan’s government. But it remains to be seen if Khan’s dalliance in the international black market for illegal nuclear activities is closed. The world now waits to see what Khan will do. Will the infamous nuclear scientist retire from the field of nuclear weapons development, or will he get back in contact with his international network and reignite old programs?

To be sure, there are those who would likely be prepared to pay handsomely for Khan’s expertise and impressive black book of contacts—think Iran, North Korea, and even al Qaeda. Tehran, in particular, would likely be thrilled to get back in touch with Khan. Latest reports show that the Iranian state is rapidly approaching the point of gaining the ability to construct and launch nuclear weapons. Having the world’s foremost nuclear scientists on board in the last, tricky stages of nuclear development would be a tremendous boon for Iran’s terrifying nuclear program

Vatican Rule in Italy

Once again, the Vatican demonstrated how much power it has in Italy. The sad case of Eluana Englaro has captured the imagination of Italians for years. Ms. Englaro has been in a vegetative state since 1992. Her father wants the doctors to stop feeding her and let her die.

The courts ruled in her father’s favor, and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s ruling coalition stayed out of the action. But then the Vatican stepped in. Politicians and commentators say that senior cardinals and the Vatican forced Berlusconi’s government to step in at the last minute.

On Friday Berlusconi’s government decreed that doctors must not withhold food from Ms. Englaro. Italian President Giorgio Napolitano is refusing to sign the decree, saying it is unconstitutional. Berlusconi said that he would take the issue to Parliament, to force Napolitano to sign.

A former member of Parliament stated that Italy is now “a clerical dictatorship.” The Vatican rules. For more on the Vatican’s power in Italy, see our article “The Kingbreaker.”

Elsewhere on the Web

Amid the global economic crisis, British business collapses jumped 124 percent in the final three months of 2008, the Times Online notes. “Over 350 people a day are now becoming insolvent,” it says. “While today’s data was worse than expected, experts warned that the figures were set to rise higher in the coming year.”

Enjoy the low gas prices while you can. According to oil expert Henry Groppe, oil prices will more than double by the end of the year. It’s a simple matter of supply and demand, says Groppe, who predicted early last year, while prices were sky high, that there would be significant drop in the price of oil. Groppe’s advice to consumers: Enjoy the current gas prices now, because they won’t be around much longer.

The White House is lowering expectations of what the United States can accomplish in Afghanistan. The Washington Postreports that on Sunday the president’s national security team called the situation “much tougher than Iraq.” American officials are saying that many more nato troops are needed to combat a worsening situation in the country where the Taliban and warlords are gaining strength against the U.S. and its allies, which originally invaded the Taliban-controlled country in 2001. A State Department envoy went as far as to say, “Nato’s future is on the line here.” Look for the United States to back down in this theater of the war on terror, phrasing it as “seeking a regional solution.”

The Washington Postreports what theTrumpet.com recognizes as one of the worst environmental curses Australia has ever experienced: “Entire towns have been razed by wildfires raging through southeastern Australia, burning people in their homes and cars in the deadliest blaze in the country’s history. The number of dead Monday stood at 108, a grim toll that rose almost by the hour as officials reached further into the fire zone.”

Antisemitism is reaching far beyond the borders of Europe or the hatred hotbed of the Middle East. Gunmen, protesters and official government statements in Venezuela and elsewhere smack of an increasingly anti-Jew tone, equating Israel and Jews with Nazi Germany.

And Finally …

First it was a honeybee plague that threatened to destabilize pollination. Now it is a bat-killing plague that threatens to halt the ecological check on insect population growth. If the bat population decreases, the U.S. could be flooded with blood-sucking mosquitoes and crop-devouring insects. This world’s ecological system is turning topsy-turvy. For more, go here.